A fundamental pre-requisite for the establishment of predictive full-scale simulations tools for combustion systems is the development of reduced chemical models able to capture the most significant aspects of the combustion processes such as flame extinction or pollutants formation. As a basic step, this reduction process requires a fundamental understanding of the detailed chemistry of a flame which must be supported by experimental evidence.

Counterflow laboratory flames are excellent candidate to explore combustion chemistry. because they can be simulated with reduced computational efforts. For this reason, the overall setup is designed to produce the same velocity and scalar fields described mathematically by the similarity solution implemented in several 1D codes.

The ITV employs two counterflow burner setups to investigate the soot formation of advanced bio-derived fuels and to shed light into combustion processes of coal volatiles under air and oxy-fuel conditions. Detailed characterization of the combustion chemistry is performed via a time-of-flight (ToF) mass spectrometer measurements which allow for a fast identification of stable and unstable species in the flame. Furthermore, optical laser-based diagnostics, such as laser-induced incandescence and laser extinction, are used to determine the soot volume fraction within the flame.